Karun Vijayraghavan, a UT ECE graduate student in Prof. Mikhail Belkin’s group, was recently awarded the outstanding student paper award at the International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (IRMMW) held in Mainz, Germany. IRMMW is the premier conference for terahertz (THz) science and technology and Karun’s work on THz quantum cascade laser sources was selected as the top paper/presentation amongst 133 doctoral student entries. The work focused on the development of a room-temperature, narrow linewidth, frequency agile terahertz source using difference-frequency generation in quantum cascade lasers. This is the only electrically pumped, compact semiconductor source that can operate and tune over the 1 to 6 THz frequency spectrum at room temperature. More information about the work can be found in the recently published Nature Communications article (vol. 4, num. 2021) titled “Broadly-tunable terahertz generation in mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers".